The Child
by Kit Merlot
Summary: Danny and Steve, on the trial of a serial killer.


Title: The Child  
Author: kitmerlot1213  
Word Count: 2032  
Paring: Steve/Danny (friendship), Chin, Kono, Doris, OMC  
Genre: Horror/angst/friendship  
Rating: "R" for swearing and violence

Warning: This is a horror story involving the violent deaths of children- I don't go into gross detail but the violence is discussed.

Disclaimer: This story is for fun and no profit. I do not own any of the characters from Hawaii Five-0-I'm just borrowing them briefly.

Summary: A serial killer is on the loose and it's up to the Five-0 crew to stop him.

A/N: I had this written before Halloween and then Hurricane Sandy happened. This was written for spook_me fest and it's a rather disturbing story and it kind of feels like a fever dream which kind of works. Also, thanks for mcdannoluvr for the read through.

The Child

Ever since he was a child, Halloween had always been one of Danny's favorite holidays.

And Halloween wasn't just his favorite day because he loved to eat mass loads of candy because who didn't love that? No, Halloween was his favorite because he loved the dark promise in the cold night air, the feeling that danger was close at hand and one never knew what could happen.

But then he became a cop and he soon learned that there was true evil in the world and suddenly his long ago imaginings became all too real.

After all of his years with the Newark PD and his last two years in Hawaii, there weren't many things that gave Danny the creeps or threw him off of his game. However, seeing the dismembered corpse of an eleven year old little girl ranked right up there.

And it wasn't as if the murders weren't disturbing enough, but the victim had been left under a tree in one of the oldest sections of the local Catholic cemetery. Even though it was daylight, cemeteries were his least favorite place in this world and particularly one where he could see that the murdered little girl had been left in such a way that she was lying in the shadow of one of the gravestones.

He shuddered involuntarily at the eerie sight and briefly wished that the sun would go behind the clouds, so that the macabre scene wouldn't be so brightly lit, but just as quickly he realized that he needed to start acting like the professional he was and solve this case before anymore children lost their lives.

Danny watched as Steve conferred with Max before the medical examiner nodded and the body—or what was left of it—was loaded onto a gurney, placed into an ambulance and whisked away.

This was the fourth mutilated body in as many weeks that had been left in the King Street Catholic Cemetery and all four of the bodies had been discovered the exact same way: wrapped in a blanket and left under a tree.

The four victims were all girls, ranging from nine to eleven years in age and they had all been found virtually shredded. Arms and legs had been sawed off, various organs removed and the most disturbing aspect of all was that parts of the bodies were missing.

At first, the crime scene unit thought that the bodies had been tampered with prior to their being found, but it soon became apparent that the killer was taking the body parts with him.

Danny didn't even want to begin to speculate as to what the killer's motivations were, so he instead concentrated on the victims:

Nine year old Debbie Chan was found missing her right arm and leg.

Ten year old Lucia Santiago was found missing her feet and hands.

Rita Burke, also aged ten, was found without her left arm and leg.

And now they had Sonia Kawachi, who was missing her torso.

"What kind of a sick bastard would do this?" Danny muttered to himself.

He looked up as Steve slowly approached; the grim look on his face mirroring everyone else's at the graveyard.

Danny nodded towards the crime scene before he spoke. "Anything new?"

Steve shook his head. "No, just like the other three, what was left of the child's body was thoroughly washed and redressed before it was dumped here."

"Damn, I was hoping we'd get some physical evidence this time." He started to pace but stopped just as suddenly. A horrible thought took root in his mind and refused to let go and he shook his head several times before he could speak.

Danny swallowed convulsively before he could actually get the words out, appalled at his own train of thought. . "It's like he's trying to create a girl from…" He had to take another gulp before he could finish his thought. "It's like he's building a little girl from spare parts."

Steve had looked just as shaken at Danny's words but now that they were back at HQ, his game face was back on in full force.

He gathered Danny, Chin and Kono around the tech table, the girls'' medical reports set up on the screen.

"Alright," Steve began, "we've got that all four of the girls were knocked out with chloroform and injected with a paralyzing agent."

He read directly from the report in front of him. "Traces of suxamethonium chloride, usually given to patients undergoing an operation, were found in all four girls' tox screens."

He paused and exchanged a quick look with Danny before he spoke again. "The girls' limbs were then cut off while they were still alive."

"Max seems to think that the killer wanted to do the amputations while the limbs were filled with blood." Chin added.

"Holy mother…" Kono muttered in shock. She turned to look at Danny, knowing that he would be seeing Grace in all of the little victims. Hell, they all were but Danny in particular couldn't help but think about his daughter when cases involved kids.

And even though he'd perfected his badass SEAL persona, Steve always took those to heart as well.

Kono had made a vow to herself after the first girl died that they would catch this sick son of a bitch and she'd meant it. And judging from the equally determined looks on Chin, Steve and Danny's faces, they were right there with her.

Steve paused to look at Danny again before he spoke and he seemed to gain strength from his friend's gaze. "Max assures us that the girls were completely unconscious and that they didn't feel any pain."

"That's at least one small comfort" Danny whispered.

It was an entire week later and Five-0 still weren't any closer to finding the girls' killer. The only thing the victims had in common was that the month before the first death, all four girls had a death in the family. For three of the girls it had been a beloved grandparent, and for the last, her aunt.

But that was the only similarity. The families all went to different funeral homes, and there wasn't a single person in common who went to all four of the funerals.

The four girls didn't go to the same school or play the same activities or have any friends in common. They all lived in different neighborhoods in Honolulu and their parents were also investigated and none of them so much as crossed paths with the others.

Danny huffed out an annoyed breath and threw his file down in disgust. They had run down every lead they'd had and had reached a dead end and short of a miracle, they weren't going to solve this case.

He could hear thunder in the distance and realized that they were in for a bad storm.

'Just great', he muttered to himself, 'the weather is now matching my mood.'

Danny clenched his fist in anger and wanted nothing more than to start punching something, anyone, but that wouldn't help relive his frustration.

He reluctantly stood up and he'd only gotten as far as pushing his chair back under his desk before Steve was standing in the doorway.

"Beer and steaks at my place. Let's go."

The drive back to Steve's was mostly silent, neither man wanting to speak about their lack of success in finding the child killer in their midst.

But Danny couldn't stand that much non-noise and he decided that bringing up painful family memories was better than their mutual miserable silence.

"So how's Doris?" Danny asked blandly.

Steve rolled his eyes in annoyance. "She's Doris," he answered shortly.

Danny continued to stare at Steve, waiting for more information. Steve shifted uncomfortably until he finally blurted out, "She's the biggest pain in the ass I've ever had to deal with. She's pushy and arrogant and thinks she's the master of all situations. Do you know she even started to give me advice on this case?"

He turned incredulous eyes on his friend and was startled to see Danny smiling slightly. "So you come by your fabulous personality naturally then?"

Steve snorted in derision. "I am nothing like Doris!"

"It's true that you aren't abrasive but you are just as pushy," Danny countered.

"Pushy," Steve repeated. "I am NOT pushy!"

Before he could continue both his and Danny's cell phone starting to ring. Danny hit "accept" and Kono's voice filled the Camaro.

"Boss, other boss, we've got a 911 call reporting suspicious activity at the King Street Cemetery."

The two friends exchanged a brief look before Steve made a U-turn. "Tell HPD that we're on our way."

"Let me get this straight. You wrestled this man to the ground and then handcuffed him?" Steve asked.

Doris McGarrett nodded matter of factly. "Yes, Steven as I already told the other officers, I decided to stake out the cemetery and catch the killer in the act. And it worked," she added smugly.

Dr. Carl Moran, deputy coroner for the county of Oahu, was caught red handed, placing the headless body of nine year old Leilani Seu under a tree in the King Street Cemetery.

Doris had then sprung out from the gravestone she was hiding behind, knocked him to the ground and then zip tied him.

She then called 911 and waited for Steve and his crew to arrive.

"Also, I think you boys need to ask yourselves why you didn't notice that the deputy coroner signed off the death certificates of the girls' family members."

When Steve and Danny just continued to look at her, Doris smiled condescendingly. "Rookie mistake. But don't worry, now that I'm here, you'll get better."

Doris didn't wait for a reply before she asked, "Now, when do we get to interrogate him?"

After what felt like hours, Steve finally convinced Doris to leave the Five-0 offices and let them finish the paperwork. Doris immediately agreed and then insisted on all four detectives coming back to the McGarrett house so she could cook for all of them.

Steve looked horrified but nodded dumbly.

Kono had quietly snickered, secretly enjoying how Steve's mom made the usually unflappable man squirm. But she quickly sobered when she asked the question that had been nagging all of them out loud.

"Where are all of the missing body parts?" The other three team members looked just as disturbed at Kono's question. "And why did he do any of this? Dr. Moran was a model citizen before he started the killing."

"He refuses to talk until his lawyer gets here and I doubt he's ever going to tell us," Steve finally answered.

"Besides," Danny said, "does it actually matter why he did it? The fact is five little girls are dead, murdered and mutilated, and they're never coming back. Finding out why the psycho wanted to play Dr. Frankenstein won't help the parents sleep at night."

The four friends stood together, each lost in thought. What could have driven this sane man into doing something this sick and twisted?

Thunder and lightning battered Oahu, and anyone who didn't need to be out, gladly stayed indoors where it was safe and warm.

In the darkness of the laboratory, a body of a little girl hung under a bell jar, held up by an elaborate contraption of pulleys and wires.

The little girl was practically covered in bandages and her limbs were held together with stitches and screws and bolts.

Electricity struck the wires that were attached to the hanging corpse and the girl's body jerked and twitched with each surge. Her eyes opened convulsively and if anyone had been in the room they would have noted that one eye was blue and other brown.

She was beyond horrifying; a child who had been put together from the pieces of dead children.

The storm finally came to an end, the lightning and thunder ceasing until the night was blessedly silent once more.

The child under the glass twitched and jerked one final time, the aftershocks of the electricity still running through it.

Slowly, the little girl's heart started beating.


End file.
